198 LOCH CRERAN. 



animals, while the cannibal races of the old and new 

 worlds, whether Fijians or Maoris, Niam-Niam or Caribs, 

 have been the most vigorous, intellectual, and respectable 

 savages that our advanced civilisation has come in 

 contact with. So that we are forced to conclude there 

 must be some connection between intelligence and 

 cannibalism, and that as we ascend in the scale of being 

 as a rule we feed upon still higher class organisms than 

 the order beneath us, and consequently it might be 

 advisable to consider whether whether we seem to 

 have lost the thread of the argument ! 



A lobster ! said one, as we stood by the shore in the 

 dusk. A beast that bites ! remarked another in explan- 

 ation. But there are quite a lot of them flopping about, 

 so we soon gather them together and ascertain that we 

 have got a lot of cuttle-fish. These are the largest we 

 have seen in the loch, for although we have met the eggs 

 of the creature in a forward state of development, we 

 have never yet obtained full-grown samples of Loligo 

 vulgaris. These fellows are about a foot long, without 

 their tentacles. Ere we manage to transport them to our 

 domicile, the receptacle in which they are placed is 

 swimming in the black ink which they throw, in place of 

 the brown liquid of the Sepias. So the youngsters gather 

 round to see the Sea-Clerk dissected, and its ink-bottle 

 taken out, followed by the quill pen of a back bone, so 

 delicately transparent, and such an exact reproduction in 

 its way of the old goose-quill. The mandibles of the 

 parrot beak, too, so characteristic of the octopi, are keen 

 enough to prove that they are really " beasts that bite," 

 even if we had not been foolish enough to prove the 

 ability of the tribe, and be sharply bitten by little creatures 

 two or three inches long. Their stomachs are well filled, 



